Concepts lacking process-level mechanistic description resist scientific clarification
Evidence
In sum, although Allport made a strong case for projection as a process that should be of interest to students of prejudice, his more speciļ¬c deļ¬nitions and distinctions did not necessarily provide a solid foundation for later research. Others had no more luck taming the concept. In the end, all such attempts suffered from the same limitation: a lack of a clear description of the cognitive and motivational processes underlying projection. Without a more process-oriented approach, and without speciļ¬cation of the mental mechanisms involved, efforts to clarify the nature of projection were doomed to failure. ā John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2352
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Concepts with real histories resist definition; only the historyless are definable. ā Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works ofā¦, 992